HAVING assisted, and admiringly, at Mrs. Gaston’s elaborate dinner-toilet that evening, Margaret followed the cloaked and figure down the stairs and out to the door-steps, when she said a gay good-bye to her cousin and General Gaston, and turned and entered the house. She had been informed that Louis Gaston also had an engagement, and so she had the not unwelcome of a quiet evening to herself. There were some things that she wanted leisure to think out, calmly and , and as the drawing-room looked very warm and she turned toward it, and had sunk into her favorite chair before the fire, when she perceived, for the first time, that the library doors were thrown open and that Louis Gaston was sitting there at work. The sight was an irritating one. His very attitude and the set of his firm, strong shoulders, recalled her of the previous evening, and roused all the quick indignation she had felt then. She was about to withdraw at once, in the hope that he might not have perceived her entrance, when he turned suddenly, and, seeing her, rose and came forward, his face wearing its pleasantest smile, and his manner at its easiest and friendliest.
“Well, Cousin Margaret,” he said, “and so they’ve left you behind! But I can assure you, you needn’t regret it. The party is an old-fogy affair, which will be long and tedious. There’s some glory to be got out of it, I dare say, but I’ll there isn’t much pleasure.”
Margaret heard him deliver himself of these affable observations with intense indignation. “Cousin Margaret” indeed! Did he presume to suppose for an instant, that he could for the he had offered her, and the positive pain he had caused her, by a few careless words of flattery and a tone of voice?
“I shouldn’t have cared to go with them in the least,” she answered coldly. “I am used to quiet. Cousin Eugenia said you had an engagement.”
“So I have; but that can be , as also, I suppose, may be your meditations,” answered Louis, feeling a keener in the of this with Margaret since he saw it was likely to cost him some pains. “Suppose now you and I run off to the theatre. There’s a pretty little play on the boards, and we’ll take our chances for a seat.”
“Thank you, I don’t care to go out this evening,” responded Margaret, in the same voice.
There was a moment’s silence, which might have lasted longer, but for some symptoms of flight on the part of Miss Trevennon, which the young man saw and to .
“I am afraid,” he began, speaking with some , “that I was so unfortunate as to offend you in some way last night, when your visitor was here——”
“Please don’t refer to that episode, unless you mean to apologize for what you did,” Margaret interrupted him, with an inflection of controlled indignation. “Your laughing at him now does not mend matters.”
The young man’s whole expression changed. This was really a little too much.
“Apologize!” he said quickly, a dark frown . “You are under some , Miss Trevennon, if you think I acknowledge it to be a case for an apology. It was a most intrusion, and as such I was compelled to resent it, on your account as well as my own.”
“Don’t let me be considered in the matter, I beg,” said Margaret, with a little touch of scorn. “I wish no such deed as that to be done in my name.”
“May I ask,” said Gaston, in a keen, distinct voice, “whether your championship of this gentleman is due to an and of his manner and conduct, or to the more comprehensive fact of his being a Southerner? You Southerners are very , I’ve been told.”
Margaret had always held herself to be superior to sectional prejudices, but there was something in his manner, as he said this, that infuriated her.
“We Southerners,” she answered, feeling a thrill of pride in identifying herself with the race that, by his looks and tones, he was so scornfully , “are not only a clannish people, but also a one, and the very last and least of our number is of forgetting the sacred law of hospitality to a guest.”
Miss Trevennon had forgotten herself, but it was only for a moment. She had said more than she meant to say, and she checked herself with an effort, and added hastily:
“I much prefer not to pursue this subject, Mr. Gaston. We will drop it just here, if you please.”
The fact that Mr. Gaston bowed calmly, and quietly returned to his work, by no means proved that he was in reality either calm or quiet. It was only by a great effort of self-control that he forced himself to be silent, for both the words and tones that this young lady had used were stingingly provoking. But what him most was the of the whole thing. That this ignorant Southern girl, who had passed most of her life in a little insulated village, should venture to set him right on a point which affected his bearing as a man of the world, was infuriating. He mentally assured himself that his conduct toward the fellow, King, had been exactly what it should have been, and, moreover, he determined to take occasion to show Miss Trevennon that he neither regretted nor desired to apologize for it. He felt eager for an opportunity to do this, and all his accustomed prejudices and habits of mind grew deeper and stronger.
For a few moments longer they kept their places in perfect silence, Margaret in her seat before the fire and Gaston at the writing-table, when suddenly the door-bell rang. Neither moved nor , and a few minutes later Thomas announced a gentleman to see Miss Trevennon.
“Alan Decourcy!” exclaimed Margaret, springing to her feet, in excited surprise, as the gentleman approached. “Why, Alan, this is unexpected!”
Mr. Decourcy came nearer, and taking both her hands in his, pressed them cordially.
“It would be ungrateful of me not to recognize my cousin Margaret, in this tall young lady,” he said, looking at her with obvious admiration in his calm, gray eyes, “and yet it is only by an effort that I can do so.”
At this instant Margaret remembered Louis, whom, in the confusion of this meeting, she had quite forgotten. She turned toward him, naming the two men to each other, and to her she saw that he had risen, and was , with exactly the same repellant expression and attitude which he had assumed in greeting Major King the evening before. With the same manner he acknowledged the present introduction, and after that little icy bow, he seated himself at his writing and turned his back, as before.
Mr. Decourcy, meantime, had taken a chair, from which Mr. Gaston’s attitude was evident to him, but he showed quite as little concern thereat as Major King had done. And yet what a different thing was this form of self-possession! Mr. Decourcy’s low-toned sentences were uttered with a polished accent that told, as plainly as all the words in the dictionary could have done, that he was a man of finished good-breeding. He treated Margaret with an affectionate that she could not fail to find extremely pleasing; inquired for Mr. and Mrs. Trevennon, and said he was determined to go down to see the old home and friends before the winter was over; told Margaret he was glad she had verified his predictions by growing tall and straight; asked if they still called her Daisy at home, and whether it would be accounted presumptuous for him to do so; said very little indeed of himself and his travels, and at the end of about fifteen minutes rose to take leave.
Margaret quietly replied to all his questions, and when he held out his hand to say good-bye, she made no motion to detain him, by word or sign.
“I am going back to Baltimore in a day or two,” he said, “and shall hardly see you again, but I hope you will allow me to arrange for a visit from you to my sister, to take place very soon. When she writes to you on the subject, as she will do at once, do let her find you willing to co-operate with her.”
While Margaret was uttering a to this plan, Louis Gaston, who had, of course, heard all that had passed, was rapidly casting about in his mind as to how he should rescue himself from an position. There was now no more time to deliberate. He must act; and accordingly he came forward, with a return to his usual manner, which Margaret had once thought so good, and said :
“I happened to have an important bit of work on hand, Mr. Decourcy, which it was necessary for me to finish in haste. I have been obliged, therefore, to forego the pleasure of making your acquaintance, but I hope you will give me your address that I may call upon you.”
“Thank you, I am at the Arlington for a day or two,” responded Decourcy, with his polished politeness of tone and manner, in which Margaret felt such a pride at the moment.
“It is quite early,” Louis went on, “and my brother and sister have Miss Trevennon for a dinner. Will you not remain and spend the evening with her?”
Alan Decourcy to perfection the manner which George Eliot describes as “that controlled self-consciousness which is the expensive substitute for simplicity,” and it was with the most perfect naturalness that he pleaded another engagement and took leave, with compliments and regards to General and Mrs. Gaston. The price this young man had paid for this manner was some years of studious observance of what he considered the best models at home and abroad, and his efforts had been successful. It imposed upon Margaret completely, and charming though she saw her cousin to be, she would have said that his manners were as unstudied as a child’s.
Louis Gaston, on his part, considered the matter more understandingly. He recognized in this cousin of Miss Trevennon a polished man of the world. The type was familiar enough to him, but he knew that this was an of it, and the very fineness of Mr. Decourcy’s breeding made his own recent bearing seem more at fault. He felt very anxious to set himself right with Miss Trevennon at once, but almost before he had time to consider the means of doing this she had said good-night and gone up stairs.
He stood where she had left him, abstracted and ill at ease. What a power this girl had of making him feel uncomfortable; for it was not Decourcy’s and disapprobation that he deprecated half so much as Margaret’s. Again there came into his breast that new, strange feeling of self-distrust. He shook it off with a sigh, tired of self-communing and reflection, and anxious to act. He felt his present position unendurable.
Accordingly, he rang for Thomas and sent him to ask Miss Trevennon if he could speak to her for a few minutes. Thomas carried the message, and presently returned to say that Miss Trevennon would come down.
When she entered the room, soon after, she looked so stately, and met his eyes with such a cold glance, that a less determined man might have . He was very much in earnest, however, and so he said at once:
“I ventured to trouble you to return, Miss Trevennon, in order that I might apologize to you for what I acknowledge to have been an act of rudeness. I am exceedingly sorry for it, and I ask your pardon.”
“You have it, of course, Mr. Gaston. An offence acknowledged and regretted is necessarily forgiven. I want you to tell me , however, what act you refer to.”
“I feel myself to have acted unwarrantably, indeed rudely, in my manner of receiving your cousin. I was angry at the time, and I forgot myself. I have done what little I could to atone for it to Mr. Decourcy, but I felt that I owed you an apology, because in thus toward a guest of yours I was guilty of a rudeness to you.”
Margaret was silent; but how she burned to speak!
“Am I forgiven?” said Gaston, after a little pause, for the first time smiling a little, and speaking in the clear, sweet tones that she had lately thought the pleasan............